A vividly accessible dramatization of the well-known Gospel stories of Jesus’ early years.
A novel focuses on the childhood and youth of Jesus.
This new work by Fuja (a follow-up to his 2014 debut novel, Favored) takes up the familiar story of the boyhood of Jesus of Nazareth, from the Bethlehem cave of his birth to his entry into his public ministry and the recruitment of his disciples. But the bulk of this volume centers on Jesus’ boyhood, situating him in the middle of a warm and extended family: not just his parents, but also his grandparents and cousins such as Mary’s kinswoman Elizabeth; her husband, Zechariah; and their son John, who will grow up to become John the Baptist. In this version of the Bible story, Joseph is 19 and Mary 15 when Jesus is born. Three Persian wise men—Balthazar, Kaspar, and Melchior—visit the cozy family. Meanwhile, the whole of Judea suffers under the tyranny of the murderous King Herod the Great. As the affable Joseph makes friends everywhere (including the Roman centurion Gaius Longinus, who will intersect with the life of Jesus in later years), the narrative fleshes out the Gospel stories. Young “Yeshua,” raised and loved by his parents, plays with his cousin John. Fuja presents all of this in a refreshingly modern-sounding idiom; for instance, at one point the grandmother of young John confesses, “I hate to say this, but I think my grandson is goofy.” Juxtaposed with this warm familial setting are long and fascinating sections on the hateful sons of Herod the Great, who scheme and plot against each other upon their father’s death. The crown goes to the vile Archelaus, whose brother Herod Antipas is at first grateful to be allowed to live. Antipas’ wife, the demonic Herodias (in a wonderful detail, readers are told she attended “clandestine gatherings of idol worshipers in the high places”), feels less satisfied with her lot, and the dramatic payoff of the book involves her evil scheming. Fuja blends all these elements into a contemporary-feeling narrative that grows stronger as it progresses.
A vividly accessible dramatization of the well-known Gospel stories of Jesus’ early years.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5144-3831-2
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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